About this listing
Waterfront park in northern Manhattan
Place Details
Borough : Manhattan
Neighborhood : Washington Heights
Place Matters Profile
By the mid 1950s, the Irish, Jewish, and Greek composition of nearby Washington Heights began changing as more Puerto Ricans and African-Americans moved into the neighborhood. The pool's users started to reflect the changing ethnic make-up. Police monitored Highbridge Play Center so that anyone, regardless of race, could swim there without danger. However, many African-American and Puerto Rican youths did not always feel safe walking the streets that led to the pool. Different gangs, many comprised of young people from various racial backgrounds, laid claim on local turf. Tensions between them came to a head when, in the summer of 1957, 15-year-old Michael Farmer was killed in Highbridge Park by the members of two gangs, the Dragons and Egyptian Kings. Farmer was white and from Washington Heights, and his attackers were African-Americans, Latinos, and Irish. After a heavily publicized trial, four of the gang members were found guilty of killing Farmer, and eleven others who were too young to be
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By the mid 1950s, the Irish, Jewish, and Greek composition of nearby Washington Heights began changing as more Puerto Ricans and African-Americans moved into the neighborhood. The pool's users started to reflect the changing ethnic make-up. Police monitored Highbridge Play Center so that anyone, regardless of race, could swim there without danger. However, many African-American and Puerto Rican youths did not always feel safe walking the streets that led to the pool. Different gangs, many comprised of young people from various racial backgrounds, laid claim on local turf. Tensions between them came to a head when, in the summer of 1957, 15-year-old Michael Farmer was killed in Highbridge Park by the members of two gangs, the Dragons and Egyptian Kings. Farmer was white and from Washington Heights, and his attackers were African-Americans, Latinos, and Irish. After a heavily publicized trial, four of the gang members were found guilty of killing Farmer, and eleven others who were too young to be tried as adults were sent to juvenile facilities. Although most local newspapers at the time attributed Farmer's death to juvenile delinquency, racial and ethnic strife were also prominent factors, both in his death and in the subsequent trial. Today, the Farmer killing is seen as a symbol of larger changes and racial tensions that shook the neighborhood of Washington Heights in the 1950s.
As a result of fiscal crises in the 1970s and 1980s, Highbridge Park suffered a period of neglect and deterioration. The park was frequently used as a dumping ground and site for drug use and prostitution. In the late 1990s, Parks Commissioner Henry Stern renewed clean-up and planting activities in the park, and actress Bette Midler brought citywide attention to Highbridge's plight. Midler created the New York Restoration Project in 1995 to restore community gardens in the city, and in short time turned her attention to reclaiming some of New York City's under served parks, including Highbridge. New York Restoration Project worked in conjunction with the Parks Department to clean the park and plant native species such as High Oak, Tulip, Hickory, Black Birch, and American Sycamore, and still has a presence there today.
Today, Highbridge Park continues to rebound. Those who live in the neighborhood make frequent year-round use of the park and its swimming pool, playgrounds, basketball courts, baseball fields, scenic views, and walking and biking paths. In the summer of 2007, the Parks Commissioner opened the three-mile long BMX-Highbridge Park Mountain Bike Trails, New York City's first and only mountain bike trail. The High Bridge has been closed to pedestrian traffic since the 1960s, but the Parks Department is currently working to re-open it and is aiming for completion in 2009. Even the dilapidated and orphaned Coogan's Bluff stairway may be in for restoration. When pedestrians are again allowed to promenade across the High Bridge, New Yorkers will have the opportunity to explore and view Highbridge Park in a way they have not been able to for nearly fifty years.
(Posted, March 2008)
Update: Restoration of the High Bridge began in 2012, and the bridge reopened to the public in June 2015. .
Sources
Gutman, Marta."Equipping the Public Realm: Rethinking Robert Moses and Recreation," in Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York, eds., Hillary Ballon and Kenneth Jackson
Snyder, Robert W. "A Useless and Terrible Death: The Michael Farmer Case, 'Hidden Violence,' and New York City in the Fifties," unpublished manuscript, 2007
Landmarks Preservation Commission designation report on Highbridge Play Center, Aug. 14, 2007
NYC Parks Department website: www.nycgovparks.org
New York Restoration Project, "Natural Area Mapping and Inventory of Highbridge Park: Final Report for Environmental Protection Funds from the Hudson River Estuary Grant Program," 1999.
[Posted, March 2008]
